Wednesday Colloquium: Prof. Nu Xu (LBNL)

Title: High-Energy Nuclear Collisions and the QCD Phase StructureAbstract: High-energy nuclear collisions provide a unique opportunity for studying the QCD phase structure. At zero baryon chemical potential, Lattice Gauge Theory calculations predicted the new state of matter that has been observed in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC. However, both theoretically and experimentally speaking, the location and the nature of the transition from the QGP state to hadronic state remains to be elusive. Starting 2010, RHIC launched the beam energy scan program in the center of mass energy range of 7.7 to 39GeV. In this talk we shall discuss the recent results from the first beam energy scan at RHIC and the implications on the QCD phase diagram. Future programs at RHIC, such as the physics of heavy flavor and dilepton production and beam energy scan-II, will also be discussed.